Content marketing is an excellent method to attract and engage audiences and increase brand recognition.
In the content marketing vs. advertising battle, content marketing has an edge as it provides long-term benefits and is more cost-effective.
But to reap the benefits of content marketing, you need to track performance via content marketing key performance indicators (KPIs).
With so many different content marketing KPIs, it can be hard to figure out which ones you need to track.
In this article, we share different KPIs to track, based on categories including:
- Reach KPIs
- Engagement KPIs
- Conversion KPIs
- Loyalty KPIs
Let’s start!
Table of Contents
The Importance Of Tracking Content Marketing KPIs
Tracking content marketing KPIs is essential because it tells you how successful your content marketing strategy is. It helps you know how impactful your content is — whether your audience connects with it and finds it engaging.
Another important reason to track content marketing KPIs is because it helps identify areas of poor performance, so you can work on improving them to meet your goals.
It shows you which content marketing methods work and which do not, so you can adjust your campaign accordingly.
You can do this yourself or hire a qualified content marketing agency to handle everything for you.
Content marketing services help businesses boost website traffic, generate more leads and increase sales.
Content Marketing Reach KPIs To Track
To run an efficient content marketing campaign, you need to track how many people you engage through your content. This is called reach. Below are some essential reach KPIs you can track to measure the success of your content marketing efforts:
Unique Total Visits
The unique total visits metric tells you how many unique website visitors you have or how many different IP addresses have accessed your website.
You can use tools like Google Analytics or Ahrefs to track this number.
Traffic Sources
Traffic sources will tell you where your traffic is coming from or the origin through which people discover your site. This includes search engine traffic, social media traffic and direct traffic.
Search engine traffic refers to the users who arrived at your website by clicking on search results in Google or other search engines.
Social media traffic refers to users who came to your website through social media networks.
Direct traffic refers to the traffic you receive from users who landed on your website by typing your URL into their browser.
You can track traffic sources by going to Google Analytics, then Channels. There, you will see where your traffic comes from and be able to discover more details about each source.
Geography, Demographics and Interests
These KPIs show you where your content is being consumed so you can see where your audience hangs out, and adjust your advertising budget accordingly. You can easily track users’ geographic information in Google Analytics.
Demographic data show you the age and gender of the users who consume your content, so you can see whether your content is reaching qualified audiences. Google offers a Demographics and Interests Report which you can enable to start tracking this data.
Demographic and interest data is collected together and can help you identify content that would be of interest to your target audience.
Content Marketing Engagement KPIs To Track
Engagement refers to the actions users take when interacting with your content or web page. This provides insights into how relevant your content is to your audiences.
Here are some key engagement metrics to track in your content marketing campaign:
Time on Page
The Google Analytics definition of time on page is “how long a user spent on a particular page, in seconds.” This shows you how interesting or useful your content is to your audiences. The longer a user stays on your page, the more relevant your content is to them.
You can track time on page by calculating the difference between the time when a user lands on your web page and when they move on to another page.
Click Through Rate and Bounce Rate
A click through rate (CTR) shows how many people clicked on your links and visited the destination page. This shows how well your keywords are performing.
The CTR is calculated by dividing the number of users who clicked on a given element by the total number of users who visited that page.
A related metric is bounce rate. This is when users come to your website but leave quickly without visiting any other pages. Google refers to these as single-page sessions. This can be calculated by dividing single-page sessions by the number of total sessions.
If your bounce rate is high, it means that your website content doesn’t meet users’ expectations or that it isn’t relevant to the users who are landing on your website.
Scroll Depth
Scroll depth represents the percentage of a web page a user has seen or scrolled to before leaving.
The higher the percentage the better, as this shows how engaging or relevant your content is to users.
You can track scroll depth by enabling scroll and page variables in Google Tag Manager, then configuring the scroll depth trigger. Then, you can create a Google Analytics Tag for the trigger and you’ll be able to track scroll depth for your website content.
Comments
This content performance metric is relevant only to websites that have comments enabled on blog posts. If users leave comments and feedback on your blog posts, it indicates that your content resonates with your audience, and they’re engaging with it..
Likes and Shares
This is also applicable to websites that have social sharing enabled. If users find your content valuable, they will like it and potentially share it with others on social media networks, thus expanding your reach.
You can track how your posts perform in several ways. For example, you can try using AddThis, a tool for tracking social shares.
Content Subscriptions
Content subscriptions such as to newsletters or emails shows how many users want to receive updates from you. You can easily track email subscriptions by creating a “Thank you for subscribing” page on your website and track visits to the page via Google Analytics.
Content Marketing Conversions KPIs To Track
To track conversion metrics, you need to set goals based on your brand. For example, if you run an eCommerce brand, conversion means making a purchase. IF you run a service-based business, conversion might mean requesting a quote.
Leads
To track leads, you must first identify what a lead means for your brand. For example, on a landing page with a “request a quote” call to action (CTA) button, the number of leads would indicate how many users actually clicked on the CTA and requested a quote.
Or let’s say you just published a piece of gated content — for example, a whitepaper. The number of leads would be the number of whitepaper downloads.
On the other hand, if you run an eCommerce store, a lead might be a user who creates a wishlist with products they like and are thinking of buying. You can track leads using Google Analytics.
Transactions
Tracking transactions shows you how many users completed a purchase after seeing your content. This is especially important for eCommerce platforms that are focused on driving sales through web content.
This metric allows you to see which piece of content or page has the highest performance/transactions.
You can track transactions via Google Analytics by enabling the “E-Commerce set-up" button.
Revenue
This metric allows you to see which product has the highest revenue. Unlike the transactions KPI, this metric shows you how much a customer ended up spending in total.
You can track both revenue and transactions simultaneously via Google Analytics.
Content Marketing Loyalty KPIS To Track
Loyalty is all about emotion and connecting with your audiences.
Why?
Because loyalty means customer retention and customer retention is more profitable than customer acquisition. A study that focused on eCommerce industry found that existing customers spend more money than first-time customers. What’s more, the majority of consumers are more likely to buy from your business again, if you provided a great customer experience.
Here are some crucial loyalty KPIs to rack:
Returning Visitors
This metric allows you to see how engaging your content is and how well you are able to attract and retain audiences. The rate for this KPI is easy to calculate — simply divide the number of repeat visitors by the number of total unique visitors during a specific period of time.
For example, if the number of your total visitors over past three months was 30,000 and 10,000 of them were unique visitors, divide 10,000 by 30,000 and you will get the returning visitors rate (0.33 or 33%).
Repeat Purchases
This metric is relevant for eCommerce stores and shows you how many customers purchased more than once from your website. If a customer completes a second purchase, they count as a repeat customer.
You can calculate this percentage by dividing the number of repeat customers in a specific period of time by the total number of customers. Multiply the number by 100 and the percentage you get is your repeat purchases rate.
Wrapping Up On Content Marketing KPIs
Tracking content marketing KPIs is essential as it shows you what you’re doing well and also what you can improve to increase your:
- Reach
- Engagement
- Conversions
- Loyalty
Quality content can go a long way in helping you attract, engage and retain your audiences and foster relationships with your customer base.
To make sure the content you create is valuable and engaging, create a website content checklist to assess each piece of content before pushing it live.
Professional content marketing agencies can help you in that regard by providing their expert opinion on the matter and guiding your business as fits your market.
Good luck!
